"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It" -
6 - Fortune

"The Enemy and how I Helped to Fight It" -
6

“Okay, I think that I can now return to my country and my
village. By the way, how many forbidden books do you have?”

“Oh,”, one of them said to me, “their number is growing
geometrically. When I checked two weeks ago, their number was
2,148,763. A week ago there were 4,278,109 forbidden writings. Now
there must be about 8,600,000 ones.”

“You are wrong.”, I said to him.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are now exactly 8,517,559 or 8,517,560 forbidden
books.”

“Why is it so important?”

“Why, it means that, for the time being, you have 82,440 or
82,441 extra books which you can read at bedtime if you can’t fall
asleep!”